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tv   PBS News Hour  PBS  March 21, 2013 5:30pm-6:30pm PDT

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>> that's all for this edition of "newsline." stay with us.
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captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: in jerusalem and the west bank today, president obama encouraged palestinians and israelis not to give up on peace. good evening, i'm jeffrey brown.
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>> sreenivasan: and i'm hari sreenivasan. on the "newshour" tonight, rockets fired from gaza into israel today underscore the challenges to peace efforts. margaret warner has the latest from jerusalem. >> brown: then, as the house agrees to a measure to avoid a government shutdown, we update the short- and long-term budget battles. >> sreenivasan: paul solman looks at free trade through the eyes of a classic american brand, getting wet in the global market. >> i know that every surfboard that comes into america comes in duty free. and when i sell a surfboard to australia, japan, europe, its a 20% to 25% duty that they have to pay to get mine. >> brown: we continue our series on how broadband technoly is changing our lives. tonight, a look at chattanooga, tennessee-- home of the nation's fastest internet connections. >> sreenivasan: and, spencer michaels has the story of photo journalists who risked their lives to tell the stories of iraqis in the early days of the war. >> as photographers, we're always looking for ways to communicate the urgency of
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horrible drama in these situations. >> brown: that's all ahead. on tonight's "newshour." >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations.
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and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> brown: president obama called on young israelis to see the world through palestinian eyes and challenged israeli and palestinian leaders to abandon formulas and habits that have blocked peace. but even amid his visit, the old threats and realities of violence were present. margaret warner reports from jerusalem. >> warner: the second day of the president's trip to israel and the west bank was met with rocket fire from one place mr. obama won't go: hamas-controlled gaza two landed in sderot, israel in a clear breach of the ceasefire between the islamist hamas faction and israel struck late last year. there were no injuries. a little-known militant group claimed responsibility, saying
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it wanted to show that israel could not protect its airspace during mr. obama's visit the israeli mayor of sderot said there was another message from militants to president obama: >> the message is "why you go to ramallah? we are the owners of this region. you can arrive to gaza and talk with us. why do you go to talk with abu mazen in ramallah?" >> warner: abu mazen is palestinian president mahmoud abbas, who greeted mr. obama in ramallah at mid-day, a small band of protestors in the city center was kept well away; just outside the city, there were minor clashes with israeli troops. the two leaders held talks on one priority of president's four-day visit to the visit: re- invigorating peace talks between israelis and palestinians. but contrary to the apparent and uncharacteristic chumminess with prime minister netanyahu yesterday, mr. obama and abbas displayed an understated- business like-tone in a brief press conference.
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the president denounced the morning's rocket attack and the group that rules in gaza. >> hamas cares more about enforcing its own rigid dogmas than allowing palestinians to live freely; and because too often it focuses on tearing israel down rather than building palestine up. >> warner: on the issue at hand, the president did say his administration was committed to give the moribund peace process another try, and he urged the palestinians to do the same. >> my argument is even though but it is israel's continued expansion of jewish settlements on the west bank that have been a stumbling block to revived peace negotiations. a halt to such construction is a palestinian pre-condition for re-starting talks. mr. obama had joined the call in 2009, but hasn't pushed since. today abbas seemed to reaffirm that insistence, though he didn't use the word condition. >> ( translated ): it is the duty of the israeli government to at least halt the activity so
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that we can speak of issues. and when we define our borders and their borders together, each side will know its territory in which it can do whatever it pleases. so the issue of settlement is clear. >> warner: but the president said pre-conditions for talks were counter-productive. >> we do not consider continued settlement activity to be constructive, to be appropriate, to be something that can advance the cause of peace. if the only way to even begin the conversations is that we get everything right at the outset, or at least each party is then we're never going to get to the broader issue, which is how do you actually structure a state of palestine that is a sovereign, contiguous, and provide the palestinian people dignity. >> warner: the president also met with young palestinians,
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many of whom have lost faith in any resolution to the decades- long conflict. back in jerusalem, before a larger crowd of similarly-young israelis the president gave the featured address of his mideast tour. while reiterating america's unwavering support of israel, he also called on them to identify with their young palestinian counterparts. >> put yourself in their shoes-- look at the world through their eyes. it is not fair that a palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the it is not right to prevent palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a students ability to move around the west bank; or to displace palestinian families from their home. neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. just as israelis built a state
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in their homeland, palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land. >> warner: in a speech that at times had the feel of a campaign trail shot of adrenaline, mr. obama echoed some of the themes that helped get him elected in 2008: that the people should compel their leaders to action. >> let me say this as a politician, i can promise you this: political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. you must create the change that you want to see. >> warner: the evening closed with a state dinner; tomorrow, the president leaves for jordan. >> brown: a short time ago, i spoke to margaret in jerusalem. >> brown: mgaret, start wit the speech there in jerusalem. the president has been unpopular in israel. he specifically targeted young israelis in this major address. what did officials there tell
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you about the message he wanted to get across? >> warner: jeff, he wanted to do very much what he did in the 2008 campaign as a senator in which he directly appealed to younger and uninvolved citizens, people who have been apolitical in the past to get engaged and get involved and actually believe they can change their country. and really very resonant of the '80 8 campaign. he had e line at the end where he said "as we face the twilight of israel's founding generation, young people of israel must claim the future." now, he spent a lot of time talk to some of the founding generation or their sons and daughters here but he is saying to the israeli young people that you are not going to be secure if the israel of the future is still worried about terrorist attacks, rockets coming over the border, increasingly hostile neighborhood and there's -- there are no number of iron dome defense stems to tha can
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adequately protect israel, even the united states can't. so it was kind of a call to action. >> brown: it's been interesting today. yesterday we see the president telling both sides, really, that peace is still possible. i wonder if the american officials there are talking about to the what degree he really is committed to putting a renewed effort into this. >> reporter: jeff, it was so interesting because the president and his people have been so careful not to make that commitment before this trip but today -- yesterday and really today i think he did raise expectations. not that he's going to do shuttle diplomacy himself but that his administration not only thinks it's possible but more than that that it's doable and so i think they'll have to follow through. he said secretary of state kerry is going to do a lot of this and he put his hand on kerry's shoulder essentially to say
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"he's my man." but the people around the president say that he got indications, he thinks, despite the language in public, that each of these leaders is ready to take some steps that will advance getting back to the peace talks of getting to the core issues. >> brown: one key issue is the question of the israeli settlements. what's your sense after hearing what the president had to say today? >> warner: from what we can figure out here, the administration has this idea that there will have to be some reciprocal confidence-building measures. now that's the term from the old post-oslo 20 years of negotiations that didn't really pan out but that there will have to be some taken by each side and as one official said to us today, that will kind of commit each side to getting invested in this process. one of the ideas being floated -- things like releasing palestinian prisoners on the part of the israelis or transferring more security control to palestinians in
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certain areas of the west bank. but the key thing is will the israelis restrict settlement building in some way, perhaps by saying we won't for a while do any outside the settlement block and in return -- not in return but at the same time or a day or two later the palestinian leader would make that that for now at least he's not going to go to the u.n.-- which he's now entitled to, whether it's the international criminal court or other agencies-- and keep pushing this unilateral recognition agenda. so nobody who's made that connection publicly or even privately to us but that is the kind of thing that's being looked at and i think quietly encouraged but then what the president kept saying today is pretty quickly when the talks start it can't be around these peripheral issues. it's got to be about security and borders. and once you settle those, the other issues go away like settlements. borders issue will settle the settlements issue. >> brown: very briefly margaret.
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even today while the president is there you have rockets coming in from gaza. is that seen as having any immediate impact or is that just more a sense of difficult these are very much still out there. >> i think it's the latter, jeff. if you had big demonstrations from the west bank that would be different but in fact it helps the president prove his point which is that the palestinian authority in the west bank has been doing a good job on security and has a different approach thans if gaza so they didn't seem troubled by that particular incident. that said it does make the point that this situation only grows more perilous by the day for both sides. >> brown: margaret warner in jerusalem, thanks so much >> sreenivas: still to come on the "newshour": congress averts a government shutdown; american manufacturing hits the trade winds; high speed infrastructure and photos from the iraq war. but first, the other news of the day. here's kwame holman.
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>> holman: more americans are putting their homes on the market, and that's helping to fuel home re-sales. the national association of realtors reported sales were up 0.8% in february-- the fastest increase in home sales in more than three years. housing markets across the country have benefited from near record-low mortgage rates and job growth. the housing news wasn't enough to lift wall street today. the dow jones industrial average lost 90 points to close at 14,421. the nasdaq fell more than 31 points to close above 3,222. it was a race against the calendar in cyprus today, as the island nation's government tried to come up with a plan to qualify for a eurozone bailout by monday. we have a report narrated by faisal islam of independent television news. >> reporter: not your average bank holiday in the mediterranean. cyprus' five day long bank stroll sped up this morning. into a bank jog and then first a
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cash machine run on a banking system that was still officially closed. the uneasy calm broke today. >> it's just the situation where an e.u. citizen feels that it's more encouraging to take money and basically stick it under a mattress or, you know, in a pillow or something rather than have it in a bank. i mean, how disgusting is that? >> reporter: the first spark was unconfirmed cypriot broadcast reports about the liquidation of laiki bank. it's cyprus' second biggest bank and heavily depdent on emergency central bank funding. this morning europe's central bank said this emergency liquidity support would be pulled on monday in the absence of cyprus agreeing an e.u./i.m.f. deal. cyprus only joined the euro five years ago. then it was a wealthy nation on the receiving end of $5 billion euros of so-called safe haven for fleeing bankrupt greece. now having rejected the first deal where all depositors would
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lose their savings, today the politicians were trying to conjure a new deal based on levies on larger deposits, property sales, mortgaging gaps and pension fund cash reserves. >> i believe that the political parties will shoulder the necessary responsibility for the survival of the cypriot economy. >> reporter: by the evening, however, news firmed up about the plan to split likely banks and its staff marched on parliament in the first really tense protests in this country's crisis. this evening, the queues at the cash machines grew even lnger as they ran dry. parliament also is considering capital controls, stock money being taken out of this country. >> holman: late tonight, a new proposal was floated in parliament to create a fund using revenue from natural resources, bonds and other assets. but debate was delayed until friday. the u.n. agreed today to launch an investigation into the
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possible use of chemical weapons in syria. the syrian government and rebels have accused each other of using them in an attack in aleppo this week. u.n. secretary general ban ki- moon said thenvestition will begin as soon as possible, but not overnight. >> the investigation mission is to look into the specific incident brought to my attention by the syrian government. in discharging its mandate of an investigation mission, full cooperation from all parties will be essential. i stress that this includes unfettered access. >> holman: in syria today, a mosque in central damascus was struck by a suicide bomber. at least 42 people were killed, among them a top sunni muslim cleric who supported president bashar assad. iran appeared today to open the door to possible direct talks with the u.s. over its nuclear program. the supreme ayatollah ali
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khamenei said he is not opposed to talks, but he also said he is not optimistic they'd accomplish much. he also repeated iran's claim that its nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes. a car bomb killed 13 people waiting in line for food at a refugee camp in pakistan today. hundreds were lined up for food rations at the jalozai camp in northwest pakistan when the bomb went off. an aid worker and a security guard were among those killed. 25 others were injured. many of the refugees at the camp have been displaced by fighting along the afghan border between the pakistani army and the taliban. a jailed kurdish leader in turkey called for an immediate truce today in one of the world's longest and bloodiest insurgencies. a huge crowd of kurds danced and cheered as abdullah ocalan's letter directing his forces to withdraw from turkey was read aloud. his worker's party or p.k.k. has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern turkey for 30
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years. the truce announcement came after months of peace negotiations with the turkish government. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to hari. >> sreenivasan: and we turn now to domestic politics as another congressional fiscal fight takes shape. there are three major money matters at the capitol right now with deadlines looming. the sequester, the continuing resolution and the budget. each has distinctive parts but fits into the bigger theme of how each party wants to fund the government. first, the continuing resolution: lawmakers were facing a deadline next week to pass a $984 billion measure to fund the government through september. that spending legislation was necessary because congress hasn't passed a budget in years. >> the yeas are 73 the nays are 26. >> sreenivasan: it passed both chambers in a rare show of bipartisanship. senate majority leader harry reid: >> the way we used to, and the way we used to do things is fund the government in a timely
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fashion. we have the opportunity to do that now, we're taking care of the next six months. during this six months the government is functioning because if what we've done here. >> sreenivasan: this came after lawmakers agreed on easing some budget cuts to food inspection services and flexibility for the pentagon on the sequester cuts. those automatic across-the-board spending cuts, agreed to during the last fiscal fights, will be felt more intensely over the next few weeks. finally, the broader issue as congress battles over the budget. today, house republicans approved their budget, which dramatically changes entitlement programs like medicare and makes more spending cuts. the senate began debate today on a very different version of a ten-year spending plan written by democrats. they call for higher taxes to fund government programs. house speaker john boehner remained skeptical. >> the budget that senate democrats are considering never balances, ever. that means more debt, fewer jobs and, frankly, much higher taxes
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from the american people. >> sreenivasan: the negotiations over these competing party visions for governing will begin in earnest when president obama submits his spending blueprint on april 8. with their work done, house members leave town today for a two week recess. while senators will remain in a marathon session until a vote on their own plan to fund the government. judy woodruff takes it from there. >> woodruff: for what's happening behind-the-scenes, we turn to todd zwillich, washington correspondent for "the takeaway" on public radio international. welcome back to the newshour. >> good to be with you, judy. >> woodruff: first this vote to ep the government funded by the end of the fiscal year, both the house and senate passed this. does this mean democrats and republicans finally see eye to eye on something? >> well, it means that they see eye to eye on not hang another showdown right now. both sides have agreed that they don't want to have a big battle over a government shutdown and in media attention and cable news and the countdown clocks,
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both sides have decided that's not in their interest now. i wish i could tell you they see eye to eye on fiscal matters, that's just not true. they decided to go to their corners for now. the there are things that the president and members of both parties want to get done over the spring and summer. there's optimism about comprehensive immigration reform. the white house wants to get a gun control bill done even if republicans are more reticent on that. there is some hope rekindled on a grand bargain on medicare and entitlements and taxes. the leaders and senior appropriatorss didn't want to poison the well with another battle over government shutdown. >> warner: we just heard the sequester, this automatic across-the-board spen spending cuts are still in place. there's some flexibility built in but there for the foreseeable future. is that a victory for republicans and for whom? >> right now it does seem like a
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victory for republicans. republicans are the ones who want the spending cuts and the spending cuts are now baked into the rest of the year and the sequestration cuts are now looming even heavier over further negotiations on spending in a couple ways. they have to fund the government next deal. this deal on the continuing resolution goes to october 1. after that you have to fund the government from then on. conservatives in the house who have a lot of power over leadership we've seen on these issues is telling the speaker john boehner we insist that the sequestration cut, these new values, that they get baked into future levels. we want this to be the new baseline. don't treat them as though they're temporary cuts you'll negotiate away. we want these etched in stone for perpetuity. democrats don't want that. so you a if they see eye to eye, not by a long shot on the sequestration cuts. >> woodruff: so that will be part of the debate going forward
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and as we heard in that report they are already talking about each what each side would like they have no the budget down the road. but does either side have the upper hand at this point on that set of arguments. >> it doesn't seem like it because what you've seen today knees n these two budget resolutions passing, the ryan budgets in the house, the democrats will complete theirs by this weekend, two very, very different visis. these budgets are not spending bills, they're governing documents. you can read through them and see what each party's ideological priorities are. but neither is going to be the basis of any grand agreement on how to spend money or any grand bargain. what will happen and the reason why this budget process more than just sort of show boat, it really is more than that because this process, if it's to succeed will involve the president and the speaker and members of both the house and senate. in this budget process to try to reach the bnd bargain th
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some people think is still possible. we already know what the outlines have to be. 500 or 600 billion dollars in new revenue and fundamental changes to medicare, social surity, and medicaid. we know they're far from that deal but it has to take place in the framework of this budget where we saw today where opening bids, republicans, this is our ideological position. democrat it is same. >> woodruff: meanwhile, todd, you were telling us earlier today that the republicans have been able to cut out some of the money for the president's health care reform law. how did that come about? >> republicans got a couple small victories in its continuing resolution. obamacare, the affordable care act, what the administration is doing is using money to get the infrastructures for the exchanges up in running so that in 2014 when the affordable care act kicks in those exchanges are hopefully ready to go. republicans have been trying to chip away at, that deny the
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funding, disthis continuing resolution funds the infrastructure at a lower level that the's a victory for republicans trying too erode away obamacare any way they can. they had a couple others on guns other issues. >> woodruff: so they don't have the votes to repeal it but they are able to undermine it. i want to ask you about one other piece of news. majority leader harry reid announced as part of the gun control legislation that will come up in april he will include bill or language devoted to strengthening background checks. what's so t significance of that have in this big gun control cycle? >> this is news because there's been bipartisan negotiations. gun control advocates after listening to the president and joe biden and democrats after newtown and these tragedies were disappointed. they learned this week that a an assault weapons ban won't be included in the bill. that high capacity milks won't be included. they'll get votes but those will
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probably go down. background checks is a big issue the white house. harry reid is saying it will be included in the bill means that a democratic place holder -- that there has been a lot of negotiations over background checks with conservative replicas. stloz failed so far. harry reid is saying this is going to be in the base bill we put on the floor. republicans, if you want that out, negotiate with us because this bill if it's going to pass is going to pass with some form of strengthened background checks in it. this is our hard position. the white house is going to be pleased with that, of course that makes you wonder later what can the conservative house actually get passed. >> woodruff: so a helping hand for the senate majority leader? >> for gun control advocates, absolutely. after some disappointment. >> warne todd zwillich, thanks very much. >> my pleasure. >> brown: next, surf's up for "newshour" economics correspondent paul solman. his subject tonight: how the monster waves of international trade and globalization threaten-- yes-- the surfboard industry here in the u.s.
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it's part of paul's on-going reporting "making sense of financial news." >> that's steve and barrie boehne, they're the leading force in tandem. look at the grace. >> reporter: now what, you may ask, could a surfing star of the 1970s have to do with economics in 2013? >> isn't that great! >> reporter: well, steve boehne's life in the surf, which began at age 12 here in dana point, california, has involved shredding the waves, since 1958, on boards of his own invention. he's the founder and still maker and seller of legendary high end infinity surfboards. >> paul, you can use my board any time. >> reporter: even if his heavy lifting days are over. isn't this kind of a large surfboard? >> yeah, this is bigger than normal. it's a standup surfboard. it's become popular in the last five years. and a lot of the older guys really embraced it at first, because it's a little bit easier
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because you're already standing up. >> reporter: but these days, boehne's got a bigger problem than gnarly knees. >> 95% of the boards being sold in the world weren't made by us in california who started the surfboard industry. they're being made in other countries, and so my workers are competing for a job against a guy in another country who's making a tenth of his wages. >> reporter: but that's the story in literally every manufacturing industry i can think of since i started reporting on tv on business in the 1970s. >> yes, that's true, but i know that every surfboard that comes into america comes in duty free. and when i sell a surfboard to australia, japan, europe, it's a 20%-25% duty that they have to pay to get mine. >> reporter: that's the twist to steve boehne's tale: not just cheap foreign competition due to lower wages and laxer environmental standards, but import taxes other countries slap on his product to protect
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their domestic board markers. the u.s., meanwhile, has moved toward freer trade by lifting all taxes on imported boards. >> i had a dealer, a surfshop in taiwan and he wanted to get american-made surfboards and he sent me an email: "i want to get 50 sufboards. okay, this is great. we worked out the deal and then i got a phone call from him saying, "i'm sorry. i can't get those boards." and i said, "well, why not?" he says, "well, i have to pay a 50% duty when they come in and that will increase the price so high i can't buy them." and then i realized that all the boards that come in from taiwan come in duty free in the united states, so is that fair? >> reporter: boehne's crew, with him just about every day for both work and play, agree. like, totally. >> it's really tough when even just up to canada the guys on the line going, "dude, i got to pay 20% tax on this thing when it comes in." >> reporter: brent pascoe is a surfboard shaper who also
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handles infinity's shipping. >> usually they're pretty bummed out because they really want the board. it's a good board. and we offer it at a really good price on our end. but if you're already spendg $1,200 to $1,500, 20% on top of that is a lot of money. >> it happens on a daily basis, for sure. >> reporter: dave boehne is steve boehne's son. >> france, japan, spain, australia, you know, you name it. >> and that's what has made some of the more established board manufacturers have to outsource and actually have some boards produced in china. >> reporter: where, says anthony vela, they not only get their american branded board made for less, but can import it back to the u.s. duty-free. d thus the stock bottom line of businessmen hurt by free trade. >> i just want an even playing field. >> reporter: in fact, says economist robert lawrence, a trade enthusiast, most americans are at least as skeptical of free trade as steve boehne. >> when you poll the american public, something like 70% say, that trade is bad because it
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causes job loss and lower wages. only about 30% of them say that trade is good because it leads to lower prices and gains for consumers. >> low prices don't do you any good if you're unemployed and a good number of our folks are unemployed because of our free trade policies. >> reporter: economist peter morici claims that protectionism alone costs the u.s. two million to three million jobs a year-- a number lawrence dismisses as nonsense. but, insists morici: >> free trade is not working for the united states because of all these high tariffs and other protectionism in places like china, and japan, and germany. and as a consequence, america is not growing and we would have 5% unemployment instead of 8%. >> reporter: and for those who still have jobs, say skeptics like morici, their wages have been shaved for decades. dave naylor, who puts fiberglass on the boards, earns less, in
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real dollars, than he was making 20 years ago. >> they were paying a process in the '90s about $15 or $17 and the same process now pays $18 and $20. >> reporter: he'd need close to $30 just to have kept pace with inflation. tom sutherland a 40-year veteran of the industry, has experienced stagnant wages sie th'80s, when he made $50,000 a year. working 14-hour days, that's what he still makes. and he's fighting to hang on even to that. >> i was offered to go over there to teach the chinese-- this was about four or five years ago-- how to do my craft. they were going to pay me, for a six week time over there, $15,000. >> reporter: chinese manufacturers offered you $15,000 to teach their workers how to ke boards? and... >> i told them to pound sand.
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i'm not going to be a mercenary to go over there to sell my services so i cut my throat cut over here in the next four or five years by training somebody to do what i do here. i have more sense. >> reporter: but is trade really bad for america? gordon hanson isn't just a trade economist. he's a surfer himself aâ  who learned the sport as a teenager ripping on an infinity board built by steve boehne, with whose tariff plight he deeply sympathizes. but when it comes to trade itself, says hanson. >> i think what most economists would say if you tally up in terms of what's happened to our national income as a result of free trade, it's larger. >> reporter: harvard's lawrence is one such economist. >> the fact is that a lot of people are being able to, because of free trade, are able to buy cheap surfboards and this raises ultimately, our standard of living. >> reporter: but, the standard of living for most americans hasn't been rising for years now. >> it's a big concern.
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globalization is just one more item on the list which is contributing to widening opportunities and widening incomes in our economy. >> reporter: so then the perennial question: what is to be done? with the world trade organization talks stalled, in his state of the union the president pushed us exports via regional trade agreements with both asia and europe. >> to boost american exports, support american jobs and level the playing field in the growing markets of asia, we intend to complete negotiations on a trans-pacific partnership. and tonight, i'm announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive transatlantic trade and investment partnership with the european union, because trade that is fair and free across the atlantic supports millions of good-paying american jobs. ( applause ) >> the approach the united states is taking is to try and create little clubs that you can only join if you adopt our
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rules. >> reporter: but since the playing field for his product is at such a steeangl says steve boehne, why not level it by playing tit-for-tat? >> match tariff for tariff. >> reporter: well, says robert lawrence, the result could go either way. >> one possibility is that we raise our tariffs and that persuades them that they ought to lower theirs, but a second possibility that i think we need to be concerned about is we get into a trade war in which we raise our tariffs on products and then foreigners start to retaliate and what we end up is cutting off all trade. >> reporter: meanwhile, at his own shop, boehne himself sells cheap chinese duty free boards, with an infinity label no less, along with his more expensive handcrafted product. >> that's right. i have to play by the rules that are given to me and to survive, to pay my rent at my retail
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store, and so we sell a lot of boards made out of the country. and so i'm conflicted, it's true. >> reporter: as are boehnes workers. >> yeah, i do buy foreign goods. everybody does and i guess if we made everything here, things wod be a lot more expensive cause everyone wants a higher wage. >> reporter: and that's the essence of the trade argument, says gordon hanson. >> i think the surfboard industry really is a microcosm of globalization. we have winners and losers. >> reporter: but he doesn't think the u.s. surfboard industry is doomed, because of a distinctly american advantage in global trade these days. >> it's in marketing the lifestyle, you know? it's in coming up with uh the images, the aesthetic, as well as the actual technological designs that makes people want to be southern californians. >> reporter: southern californians like surfer c.d. kinley. >> got some vans. typical vans, socks, all of the rage right now. just cooler than white socks in general.
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>> reporter: speaking of cooler, is it cooler to ride an american-made surfboard, or an imported surfboard, say, from china? >> well, just to me personally, supporting a brand that's from california like infinity, who's been making boards here for 50 years, that's a lot cooler for me. >> reporter: and at least around here, that's how a lot of the cowabunga crowd still feels and still spends its money. >> brown: international trade and a call for reduced barriers was on the agenda this week, as treasury secretary jack lew met with top chinese leaders in beijing. no word yet if surfboards came up. >> sreenivasan: now, our series on broadband and how it's changing our habits, our work, our communities. tonht, we focus on why some cities are opting for even faster access and whether it will make sense for other places to follow suit.
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new york, boston, silicon valley-- those are the kind of innovation hubs that may come to mind when it comes to high speed internet. but the city home to the country's fastest broadband is nestled below lookout mountain along the tennessee river: chattanooga. >> in 2010, chattanooga became america's first gig city. >> sreenivasan: in 2008, using a bond issue and more than $110 million in federal stimulus funds-- the city's utility began laying 6,000 miles of fiber optic cables. today, with speeds of up to one gigabyte per second, chattanooga's 170,000 residents enjoy broadband that's 200-times faster than the country's average. the network ties together public services like traffic lights, a smart power grid and gives emergency responders access to more information on the go. city leaders credit it with bringing new high-tech businesses and jobs to the area.
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out in kansas city, last fall google began rolling out its own network to rival chattanooga's, part of a project to illustrate the benefits of high speed broadband. in 2010, julius genachowski, chairman of the federal communications commission, told jeffrey brown he agreed the u.s. must do more. >> we'll need to get those speeds up dramatically. we set a goal of 100 megabits to 100 million households by 2020. >> sreenivasan: one hundred, that's like 25-fold over what you're saying over where... >> a very significant increase over where we are now. it's ambitious. >> sreenivasan: yet questions about cost remain for such services, in chattanooga most don't pay the $350 for the one gigabyte of speed. instead opting for a 30-megabit per second connection, that's still nearly five times the national average. so, is chattanooga a model for the rest of the country when it comes to broadband? we explore that with sheldon grizzle, founder of the company lab, which works to promote
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innovation and entrepreneurship in chattanooga. and richard bennett, senior research fellow for the information technology and innovation foundation. he'sorked for 30ears o inernet network engineering an standards. thanks both for joining us. sheldon, i want to ask you. for those folks not in chattanooga and the rest of the country that are watching, give us concrete examples of an economic impact. >> yeah. well, it's very simple and it's been very recent, too. about a year ago we launched a program at the company lab called gig tank and the gig tank we basically started around the idea that we need create theseew busine models around what the next generation networks are going to look like. so we brought in eight teams from around the world. 15 really highly talented students from around the world to talk about what do you do with a gig? what does the world look like
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when you do this? one of the teams that came out of that was a team called banyon and what banyon is trying to do is literally cure cancer and they're doing that through a software platform that helps match up researchers that are doing thiskind of high very intense data research around things like bioinfo mat i cans and that team launch add in chattanooga, they're doing realtime collaborative research, very data intensive stuff, moving massive data sets back and forth in realtime. >> brown: how does this when the number of jobs in chattanooga? are they there new jobs coming in because of the fact that you have this network? >> absolutely. it's early in the game. i tnk people areust srting to cah oith this but we do have early signs that there are new jobs coming into the area and we're excited about that. but specifically they're more around startups and it will take
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us a couple years to fully realize that but we're seeing traction with new jobs being created. >> sreenivasan: richard bennett, if this is working in chat no gashgs why are there so few communities in the country that made this kind of investment. >> i don't think it's really time to say that it's completely working for chattanooga. they're doing some exciting things in terms of developing the incubator, trying to attract talent to the city that's more an important element than building staff networks. chattanooga isn't especially unique. in fact, the actual speeds that consumers in chattanooga get today are below the national average. we're installing something like 20 million miles of optical fiber cable in the united states every year and investing more per capita in broad band networks tn any other country. so this is an example of an innovation focus we're seeing in many communities in the united
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states, including san francisco >> sheldon, is everyone there in that city using this gigabyte that's coming to their door? >> no, no, not yet. the local company that ran the fine tore the home is just like any other service provider. you have to sign up for their service in order to receive -- in order to receive that service a lot of people are still on some of the more traditional service providers like at&t and come cast and people like that so you have to subscribe to that service and the minimum that you subscribe to is 50 megas a second which is still really fast. >> sreenivasan: why do we always tend to lump in infrastructure when it comes to building the digital superhighway. why is not not an accurate analogy? >> i think it is an accurate analogy with broad band as far as alogies go
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the thing that's important to emphasize is that the challenge that communities like chattanooga have is not actually the speed of what we call the last mile connection which is the fiber to the home or the cable to the home which would be sort of like your streets and residential neighborhoods. their problem is they're an isolated community in terms of the major switching center that comprise the internet in the united states. they're 24 basically your n.f.l. cities are where the large firms get together and meet and interconnect their networks. and so wha you needis more investment in what would be the equivalent of the interstate highway system to connect communities like chattanooga to probably atlanta where they go to actually become part of the internet. and so the tendency among these sort of populist initiatives to -- is to overinvest in the last mile and underinvest in what we call the middle mile that would say connect them atlanta.
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so that's where most of the 20 million miles of fiber are going in the united states or in the parts of the broad bandetwork of the internet that you don't see that don't connect to your home but they year the traffic jams are that prevent communities like chat that goo from really enjoying the speeds that their last mile networks, the cable networks and phone company networks are capable of providing. >> sreenivasan: sheldon, what about that notion that perhaps the last mile today of fiber isn't going to be the fastest network around five years or ten years from now? could it be wireless for other communities? would they be better off investing in some other type of infrastructure? >> today we have a a said that is at our disposal and whether last mile is covered by fiber to the home or wireless, either way we know more broadband is coming to people's homes and to people's businesses and it's important for us to be thinking about innovation, about when
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that broadband comes into people's home, du howe does that change the way we live our lives. >> sreenivasan: richard, your organization just did a paper on how the u.s. compares to other countries. help put us in perspective. >> in the late02000s, peciall during the economic collapse, the united states was in a fairly dire condition relative to other countries in terms of the speed of our broadband networks and the rate at which people were signing up for the advanced services. we were 22nd in the world in late 2009 and falling but since then we've risen to eighth place in the average speed of internet connections to the home compared to the rest of the world. we're rising every year. it wouldn't surprise me if next year we're close to the top five. >> sreenivasan: richard bennett and sheldon grizzle, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you, a pleasure. >> thank you. >> brown: finally tonight,
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the war in iraq, which began ten years ago this week, as seen through a camera lens. "newshour" correspondent spencer michels reports on a new exhibit at san francisco's deyoung museum. a warning, some images in this story are disturbing. >> reporter: it was in 2003 when the u.s. invaded iraq, looking for weapons of mass destruction, american journalists who covered while the bush administration encouraged embedding and said it wasn't responsible for the safety of those not embedded, some journalists set out on their own to see what they could see without american mel tear supervision or restrictions. >> with iraq, this is what i knew about it before i went for the first time. >> reporter: thorn anderson and kale alford, ameri reed couple who live in texas were among the
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unembedded photojournalists who covered iraq back then. their san francisco exhibit "eye level in iraq" shows the result of their taking chances as they tried to find iraqis in situations apart from the troops. >> when you talk to an iraqi person and you're surrounded by these giant men with >> when you talk to an iraqi person and you're surrounded by these giant men with, you know, automatic weapons and flak jackets and helmets, they just cannot respond to you in a normal way. you can't sit there and have tea with them; you can't go their funerals, you can't play with their children. the only way to have that experience is to get outside the humvee, to take off the flak jacket, travel in an ordinary car to relate to people in an ordinary one to one kind of way. >> the time we were working, between 2003 and 2004, it was a much safer place to be an unembedded journalist in iraq. that by the time we left at the end of 2004, journalists were being targeted more specifically. >> reporter: working often as competitors, sometimes as
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colleagues, they came up with pictures-- many published in major american journals and papers that told a different kind of story, as alford related to a group of docents at the museum. >> i wanted to be sure that i could make photographs that revealed that no war is clean. this girl is an 8-year-old girl killed in a market on the outskirts of baghdad. and this bomb we think was probably launched by a u.s. aircraft carrier in the persian gulf and landed in this busy market place and killed more than 50 people. these are her brothers who carried her into this morgue area inside a mosque. so this is a very intimate kind of moment and as photographers we're always looking for ways to communicate the urgency of horrible drama in these situations and it was challenging for me to make this
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picture. it's one of the photographs i get the most reaction from people. because it is so intimate and rare to see someone this vulnerable, this young, so perfect. she seems so alive. >> reporter: anderson's photos tell stories as well, this one even if you think you've captured something specific, who knows how the audience is going to see it. >> reporter: this picture captured the maddy army of moqtada al-sadr. >> we had managed to work behind the mahdi army's front lines and to photograph that organization from the inside.
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and that's what you try to do as journalists. i'm photographing these two men, and the son of one man, repairing an r.p.g. that has been damaged. and it think of it as a very intimate moment, one of them has primarily for me it's really kind of a visual representation of how a history of violence gets passed on from one generation to another. >> reporter: as close as he got to the people, anderson says he remained objective. >> 100%. this is journalism. one of your biggest jobs is to show people something they can't see for themselves, and the furthest you can go is into an intimate moment in some stranger's life. >> reporter: alford spoke to a group of art and photo students at the san francisco art institute.
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there are some things that for me are very black and white. i call myself a journalist. and i think for my purposes it is really important to for me to maintain a distinction between when i'm acting as a journalist and whether or not people see me as an activist. it doesn't mean that i don't see injustice in the world and it doesn't mean that i don't directly t to address that injustice. it's definitely something that is always in the back of my mind. >> reporter: at the museum, the photos speak for themselves, and while only a few show american soldiers, the spector of war permeates the exhibit, which, for curator cox, is the point. >> they're not easy to look at, but they are beautiful. think about francisco goya and the disasters of war. think about picasso and guerica. i mean these are not easy things to look at but yet they have transit across time, and they become very powerful, very significant, and sometimes where
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photography is a medium that most people now take for granted; everybody has a camera. these images are historically important, also very beautiful to look at. pictures and reflects. >> and what i see is the desperation that i felt at that time, to try and capture these pleading events before it was too late. when people see the museum, i really want them as much as possible to feel what it must have been like for iraqi people at that time. >> reporter: "eye level in iraq" remains at the deyoung in san francisco until june 16. >> brown: online we have more lasting impressions of the iraq conflict from two veteran broadcast reporters: abc news' martha raddatz and npr's deborah amos. >> sreenivasan: again, the major developments of the day: president obama encouraged
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palestinians and israelis not to give up on peace. the u.n. agreed to launch an investigation into the possible use of chemical weapons in syria. and the u.s. house voted to approve legislation to avert a government shutdown. >> brown: online, how can the u.s. avoid the scary economic scenario unfolding in cyprus? kwame holman has details. >> holman: boston university economist larry kotlikoff explains the connection between the banking crisis in cyprus and a doomed general motors car of the 1960s. that's on paul solman's "making sense" page. and judy woodruff's notebook looks at the challenge for the obama administration to bridge the understanding gap on what americans actually know about the affordable care act. all that and more is on our website newshour.pbs.org. hari? >> sreenivasan: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. tomorrow night, part three of our series about how high speed broadband connections are changing our communities. i'm hari sreenivasan. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks, among others. thank you and good night.
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